Contentions

Joe Biden’s genius for communicative errors places him outside the realm of political gaffe-makers: He’s simply a fascinating social phenomenon. At least that’s the only excuse I can muster to justify my foisting yet another Biden blooper upon CONTENTIONS readers:

Joe Biden’s denunciation of his own campaign’s ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.'”

As Reason’s Jesse Walker footnotes it: “And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, ‘Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'”

The problem for Barack Obama is: he’s already used up that excuse about the touched uncle who says whacky things you take with a grain of salt.

And, by the way, just imagine the cascade of charges, hada certain other VP candidate displayed such a psychedelic understanding of American history.